Blue Mountains martial arts team set to compete in Australian Spartan

A Blue Mountains team will take on television’s latest obstacle course competition, Australian Spartan, on Channel 7 on Sunday, March 4.

Dubbed the Black Belt Buddies, the team consists of Leura couple Sam Traish and Kerry Fragar and their friend Dale Rubenstein. The trio all train at the Blue Mountains Martial Arts Centre in Leura.

Ms Fragar, 33, said the show is all about teamwork.

“I enjoyed training as a team in the intensive preparation and spending time on-set together just as much as running the course itself,” she said. “Everything is better with friends, especially tackling the biggest course ever built in Australia!”

Ms Fragar is a professional photographer while Mr Traish, 26, works at the Fairmont Resort. Mr Rubenstein, 30, works at the Waldorf Gardens Resort in Leura.

Aiming to capitalising on the huge success of last year’s Ninja Warrior on Channel Nine, Australian Spartan debuted to disappointing ratings on February 25, with a metro audience of 816,000 viewers.

The series was filmed in Brisbane late last year.

Teams race across a series of specially designed obstacles engineered to challenge their ability to work together as a group. After a series of heats and semi-finals, 10 grand finalists will compete in an extended Spartan course. From there, the two teams left standing will race head-to-head in a spectacularly designed grand final course with the winning team taking home $150,000.